Sex and the City's Opening Credits Almost Looked Very Different

Even people who have never seen an episode of Sex and the City are familiar with the HBO show's opening credits—salsa music plays, a bus splashes dirty water all over Carrie Bradshaw, the bus is revealed to bear an ad for her column...and then there's her iconic outfit.

Sarah Jessica Parker wears a simple pink tank top with a white tutu as she strolls down the streets of New York City, looking absolutely "fabulous," as Samantha Jones would say. It's inspired both women's real world style and more than a few Halloween costumes. Not to mention that it set the tone for the adventurous fashion the show would come to be known for. But as it turns out, the team behind the show filmed another opening credit sequence—one where Carrie wore an entirely different outfit.

Entertainment Weekly shared archival footage from the Sex and the City title sequence shoot. In the clip, Carrie wears a knee-length, powder blue dress. Instead of getting splashed by the bus, Carrie trips over her own feet (pretty out of character for such a high heel expert) before noticing the bus ad.

"There were two wardrobes. One was the tutu, and we did one pass where Sarah Jessica was wearing a blue dress and didn’t get splashed; instead, she trips when she sees the ad," the show's creator Darren Star told EW. "In my mind, it was a nod to The Dick Van Dyke Show, but we didn’t use it. It’s in the archives."

The show's costume designer, Patricia Field, told EW that she discovered the tutu in a $5 bin on a showroom floor—and she recreated four versions of it for the show (probably because it gets splashed with dirty water in the title sequence). "It was very difficult for the producers to understand the tutu," Field said. "Sarah Jessica and I were fighting for it, and Darren said, 'OK, but I want other outfits as possibilities.'"

In a previous interview with the Archive of American Television, Field recounted the fight, and added that she knew the opening outfit had to be something iconic. "Whatever she's wearing has to be completely original to last in time," the stylist said.

While that blue dress is as fine a representation of the style of the time, it certainly wouldn't have become quite as iconic as that tutu has.